


where the muties go to die

by Iambic



Category: Marvel, X-Factor (Comics)
Genre: Anonymous Sex, Community: kink_bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-15
Updated: 2010-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-10 03:27:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/94968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/pseuds/Iambic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Decimation, Julio fills his days with cheap beer and meaningless sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where the muties go to die

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of my headcanon thanks to harmonyangel's [The Earth Spun Dizzy In Our Losing](http://harmonyangel.livejournal.com/156152.html). I like to think they're not the same story, but see for yourself.

The kitchen area of the dingy one-room Julio's renting looks washed out and dull this morning, obscured by the window glow, and when he scrubs at his eyes he still can't see properly. He makes shitty coffee and drinks it anyway, grabs the slice of pizza he saved from last night, and sits against the wall to eat it.

Rain's hitting the windows and walls by the time he's done. He takes a shower, scrubs himself clean of last night's mistake, and doesn't leave until the scent of cheap perfume is lost down the drain. He shaves haphazardly, cuts himself once, doesn't really care. He stubs his toe against the door as he leaves the bathroom and he swears at it in Cadre without thinking. That halts him in his tracks long enough to punch the wall. He'd sworn he would stop doing that.

Three o'clock in the afternoon and he's part of the way through a six-pack of cheap beer, waiting for the rain to stop. Feeling sorry for himself. Yeah, he's not exactly a fine specimen of human right now. His friends would be disgusted. He's disgusted, too. But it's not like he has anything to live up to, anymore. Alcohol and one night stands. It's supposed to sound romantic, but the grime that clings to his skin and the rancid smell of his apartment, the bruises he's invariably left with, that's not romantic. That's real life.

Five o'clock and he says fuck it to the rain, and walks out into it. No umbrella. No point to it. If he gets sick he'll get better or he'll die, and he's not too concerned one way or another.

There's a type that he fits, those shadows of the old mutie bars, lost in their drinks and themselves. They never buy each other drinks, but they draw together, and sometimes they go home together. Julio tries not to sleep in an empty bed. He's not sure what he'd do without someone else expecting him to sleep, but there's a pretty high roof on his building, and he doesn't mind a climb.

Five thirty and he's not the only person in the bar. The man who just walked in is short and thin, lined and haggard. He looks old; he's probably not. He sits down at the bar next to Julio, ignoring all the other chairs. He orders a drink. Julio finishes his own and his head is almost fuzzy enough to be an excuse. It's gonna have to do. Getting drunk is expensive these days.

"You look like shit," Julio says.

"You're drinkin' it," the other man says.

The bottle in question is empty but Julio raises it to his lips anyway, tilts back his head, makes a show of swallowing that last drop. He earns a quick lick of the lips.

Before, Julio'd been avoiding sleeping with men. It just felt a little like betrayal, like running and finding a replacement would be crossing a line. Now it doesn't matter. It's not Rictor sleeping around, just Julio, and Julio was never the better catch.

Now they don't ask names. The other man finishes his own shitty drink and they both leave crumpled change on the bar. They bypass the back alley -- not safe, not here, not anymore -- walk the rest of the way to a crossroads, and they flip a coin. Julio calls heads. Coin comes up tails. They turn left, away from Julio's apartment building.

"It's empty," the other man says. "It's just me now."

That's all either of them really need to know.

Julio doesn't look around when the key is turned, the door pushed aside. He keeps his eyes straight ahead until the other man turns to face him, makes eye contact. Julio steps forward. He's done this dance before. They kiss hard and with feeling, but it's not a shared thing, and when they pull apart it's like opposite magnets, bouncing them apart.

There's a question on the other man's face. Julio says, "Tell me what to do," and the question clears away.

And then it's hands on his chest, a leg behind his knees, and he drops heavily to the ground. The other man follows him there, pins him down, crouches just above Julio's erection and pushes the hair out of Julio's face. "Fight back," he says.

Julio lands the first punch in the man's jaw, and he gets a punch to the gut for his troubles. He struggles up from the floor, another punch in, and he gets thrown back against the ground.

It's heated because they're angry. Angry at the world, at themselves, at nothing in particular and everything, and it's a relief and a release to take it out on someone else. Julio tastes blood in his mouth when he rolls free and climbs to his feet, and the other man has a black eye forming that Julio gets a good look at before he's slammed against the wall. One punch to the head, one to the side, one to the stomach, and then he's being kissed again, hard and fast, and then the man steps back and Julio's on the floor, back where they started.

He licks at his split lip, tasting more blood, and when the other man runs his thumb along Julio's jaw it comes away a little bloody too.

"You hit hard," he says.

Julio shrugs. He held back as much as he could think to, but years being taught to fight for his life have sunk into his muscle and sinew and usually he's only giving as good as he gets. He's breathing a little quicker than usual, he's completely hard, and this man is still on top of him, holding himself just beyond contact.

They kiss, again, though it's not the romantic thing it could be, it's a mouth fuck. They grind, denim against demin, and when Julio tries to move the other man pins him down with his forearm across the neck. He's fumbling in his pocket.

Julio has one hand free. "I've got one." He pulls the condom from his own pocket and tosses it over.

The other man catches it and pulls open his pants, impatiently. Opens the packaging. Julio shoves down his own worn-out jeans and lets himself be rolled over, pushed down into the floor so that he has to shove back. They move in separate timing, drunk enough that they can't sync up. The other man comes first with a bitten-off moan, and it's only then that he reaches around to finish Julio off.

They pull apart and lie panting on the floor while their bruises develop. They don't look at each other. Julio doesn't ask, or offer, to stay. In the morning they'll wake up separately, still strangers, and they'll find new strangers in different places and keep drinking and fucking the pain away until they drink too much or talk to the wrong person, and then they'll end up in a gutter or a dumpster or in the river, and that'll be the last time anyone remembers them. It's a common courtesy, the forgetting. None of them want to be remembered the way they are now.

Julio pulls his pants back up and takes a piss, washes his hands, and then he's out the door. It's stopped raining, the clouds beginning to pull apart. He walks all the way home in the dark, past the dimming streetlights, and then up a flight of stairs and then home. He downs a glass of water against the hangover to come, and falls asleep until the sun filters through the bedroom blinds again.


End file.
